Weeks passed with no word of Timoth or the men the nymphs entranced. Timoth’s earnest face and the nymphs’ beautiful taunting bodies haunted my dreams. I despatched search parties into the Dreadwood Forest, and even sent a herald to the King of the Faeries, but both were fruitless. The latter explained that his kind did not interfere with the affairs of the nymphs in the hope that they would be reciprocated in kind. The former resulted in the death of a Trackford man-at-arms to a twelve-foot bear, and I was thereafter left with no choice but to call off the search parties before the mortality rate caused my popularity to plummet. The public were told simply that Timoth had gone missing.

Meanwhile, I carried out my own investigations. I spoke to masters of folklore and history and they seemed to agree that nymphs were once human. Each of them had lived in the lands near the Dreadwood Forest at some point in the past - potentially the distant past, since nymphs do not age - when they had been betrayed by their lovers. This seemed to be the key ingredient in the making of a nymph, but there was one other: that the nymph must murder her betrayer. I shuddered to think that Timoth was presently surrounded by such vengeful creatures, though I also felt a shred of understanding for them. In the county of Ebonreach, as in most of Halivaara, the penalty for adultery by a woman was to have her head shaved, and for a man to be flogged. Both were then cast into a monastery for a year in penance and as a means of community service. When I stopped to think about how I would feel if I were betrayed by Alum, I suddenly came to pity the nymphs. Perhaps there was no better punishment for such men than death.

Casting aside such dark thoughts, I occupied my time with the mundanity of everyday life. I sat on the assizes, trained and rode with Wargwa, and administered the construction of Dusky Castle. News of the conflicts that raged in Trent and beyond reached my ears, but these seemed to be far from an outcome.

I was forced to devote myself more deliberately to Alum after our argument. Mostly, this was due to Timoth’s absence: the last thing I wanted was to deal with Fraedwin directly, so I delegated Alum full military command. There was soon one other reason for reconciling so fully with my husband, however.

I was pregnant.

The signs had begun some weeks before, but became undeniable after the Dreadwood Forest incident. Despite the closeness I cultivated with my husband upon the revelation it made me miss Timoth more than ever. I would soon be incapacitated and he would have been the obvious choice for Regent.

Alum’s complaints at my time spent with Wargwa resurfaced once they extended to encompass the safety of our unborn child, and I saw the wisdom of his words. I refused to neglect the Torak altogether, but I stopped riding him and took fewer personal risks in training.

Simultaneously, I began to be surrounded by a gaggle of midwives-cum-handmaidens who all seemed to have borrowed their character in part from nymphs. As a rule, they were both frivolous and superficial, and though their assigned role as to prepare me for and assist with the birth of my child, they revelled in distracting me from penning cheques, judgements, and bills with gossip and amateur fashion shows. Even Regeda seemed transformed into a giddy busybody in their presence. I was paraded through various maternity dresses and my body commented on so frankly that I could just as easily have placed myself at a tavern frequented by sailors. Somehow, I had expected differently from the women who would become my midwives in a matter of months.

Worse still, the women seemed to have no care for my privacy. After supper I wanted nothing more than to snuggle into bed beside Alum and enjoy his tender company but always my handmaidens contrived to separate us, plying me with the promise of a more fruitful evening spent knitting baby bonnets and socks, or browsing through genealogies to determine an appropriate name. I was still eager to experience Alum’s physical affections, but the handmaidens seemed to think that this was a bad idea for both myself and the baby so I refrained.

At first, I tolerated the intrusion in my life. I’d never had very many friends, with most girls my age having considered me haughty and aloof, and most boys being more interested in my physicality than my personality. That was perhaps why I’d clung so strongly to Timoth, and why his abandonment stung so strongly. It was also fun to get away from the seriousness of everything that had happened. Perhaps not the most stately of reasons, but it was true nevertheless. I’d endured a lot in recent years and the handmaidens never let me stop to think for long enough to become morose.

Eventually, however, the handmaidens pushed their luck once too often. One in particular, a tall girl a couple of years older than me with shining yellow ringlets that fell upon her considerable bust, seemed to delight in pushing boundaries. Terera, she was called. She would touch me under the pretext of sororal closeness and jests, even to the extent of pinching my bottom or cupping my breasts. Our physical similarities did not escape my notice, though I felt I was significantly prettier of face than Terera, and I treated her gently on the assumption that she acted from jealousy. No doubt she was unaccustomed to being the second-prettiest girl in the room.

I drew the line, however, when I noticed that she was scarcely ever present at the nightly sewing and naming sessions that usually followed supper. The other handmaidens (including Regeda) variously entertained myself or Alum depending on the activity promised in either camp, but Terera always preferred to stay alongside Alum. Even then, I figured she just wanted to be free of my oppressive beauty, but some comments from the other handmaidens about Terera’s alleged intentions toward Alum forced me to forbid the handmaidens from spending time with Alum.

When my pregnancy was undeniable it was announced to the citizenry and celebrations ensued. The sicknesses had passed by then and never fully debilitated me so I continued with my duties as Countess. I intended to do so until the last possible moment, from whence Alum would manage the day-to-day affairs of Ebonreach, though I insisted on being consulted if any major decisions were to be made.

As a result, I was almost grateful when policy-affecting news reached Trackford from the eastern Duchies - after all, if it had come a few months later, I might have had to plot during the pains of childbirth!

Firstly, we heard that the pretender Entregwa, while still broadly embattled by Wilbern’s loyalist forces, had brought the westernmost regions of Trent under his control. These were the lands that bordered Ebonreach and which had historically been a part of my family’s estate.

While it suggested that the fighting would move away from Ebonreach, thus avoiding any further tragedies like Cricksham, it also meant that we were effectively cut off from the rest of Halivaara. Merchants from eastern Ebonreach paid transit taxes to Entregwa rather than Wilbern, implicitly and financially supporting the pretender’s regime, and there was nothing I could do to prevent this without impoverishing my own subjects. Alum once again suggested invasion, and though the option suddenly appeared less than far-fetched, it still involved a massive risk that I was not prepared to take in Timoth’s absence.

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By way of compromise, I requested that the faeries of the Dreadwood Forest should harry Entregwa’s forces and their supply lines. As our alliance was informal on account of most people believing the faeries to be either a myth or totally savage and unreasonable, I could not be blamed for their actions. Unfortunately, the faerie king refused to risk his forces outside the cover of the Forest without human support, thus rendering the entire enterprise pointless.

I therefore hatched a plan to satisfy the faerie king while also achieving my goals. An unofficial fund was created, accessible by merchants known in Trent who agreed to smuggle faeries into the Duchy in carriages or ships, paid upon the faerie king’s report of the safe return of these faerie guerillas. The faerie king agreed to the amended plan and many carriages of rations and weapons were burned and many rebel patrols and detachments were destroyed.

Regrettably, I underestimated the cost of the enterprise, no doubt in part because my attention was so divided. The merchants insisted on being paid even if the faeries were killed in the attempt despite the lack of a positive report from the faerie king, and I had little choice but to acquiesce. It wasn’t the merchants’ fault that the faeries had fallen in battle, after all, and without their continued support the plan would collapse.

Worse, once the casualties began trickling in, the faerie king insisted that he carried the weight of the alliance for both of us and demanded compensation for the faerie lives that had been lost. Again, I couldn’t deny his logic or his concerns, and soon the treasury was depleted by the regular purchase of food and weapons for the faerie kingdom. Some warned that supplying the faeries thus would one day be to my detriment, as the faeries’ numbers were thought to be controlled by their refusal to adopt agriculture and their aggression by their failure to adopt the modern technologies of metallurgy, but at the moment I had little choice.

Closer to home, Dusky Castle’s foundations were almost complete, but it became increasingly apparent that there were not the funds to complete both the first stage of the wall and buildings as well as maintain the faerie guerilla scheme. The treasury was buoyed by the constant influx of refugees from Trent bringing their labour and possessions into Trackford, but as this followed only shortly after a similar emigration from Haelling Cove, the city was overcrowded and any financial windfall had to be allocated to supporting the growing residential population.

The situation worsened when I received two further messengers. I was more than halfway through my pregnancy when they arrived, and not eager to consider the possibility of my becoming bedridden in later stages, but their news would not wait.

The first had ridden from Iyasgorth, where Entregwa maintained his capital. Apparently, arrowheads forged in Ebonreach had been discovered embedded in the bodies of pretender soldiers and in the quivers of faerie guerrillas, and in numbers too great to deny the existence of a formal economic arrangement. I was implicated in the raids, and the messenger carried a demand from Entregwa for reparations and the cessation of such actions.

Obviously, reparations were out of the question, though I immediately verbalised the opposite arrangement to the messenger. He carried word back to Entregwa of my intentions to send barrels of gold coins to Iyasgorth by way of apology even as I signed the cheques for the merchant smugglers and the faerie king’s arrows. Duplicity seemed a necessary part of negotiation, and I felt no need to treat such a rebel honestly in any case.

He also spoke of the planting of faerie trees endowed with the gift of rapid growth such that, if they were not hewn down immediately, would grow to the height of a man in a matter of weeks. This was not a part of my arrangement with the faerie king. It seemed that he was putting the situation to its best use and attempting to extend the Dreadwood Forest. As the biggest limitation of my faerie allies was their lack of willingness to venture far from the forest, the stretching of its eastward extent was in line with my short-term objectives, but it was unnerving nonetheless.

The second messenger came from Hollowhold and was expected. I met him with Alum at my side. After recounting an extensive list of honourifics for both of us as well as King Milos, whom the messenger represented, he began his request proper.

‘I am sure you have heard of the despicable betrayal of our King by the traitor Ioran, who perverts the beauty of Yoru to his own ends.’

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘I uncovered said betrayal. Word from Hollowhold is scarce and unreliable, however, so perhaps you can enlighten us as to why Milos was parted from Ioran. They seemed so close when I was in Hollowhold. And what of Queen Alissia and her pregnancy?’

‘I am not surprised that messengers are so hard to come by when my own journey almost came to a tragic end on several occasions. However, I have already given word of my arrival in Trackford to the King through a joined portal. Unfortunately, the Queen revealed her true colours and fled to Vizonia, where presumably an infant prince or princess by now also resides.’

Alum stirred visibly at the news, and I forced myself to remember that Alissia was his sister-in-law, and the child his niece or nephew - as it was mine. I had also to consider that if Milos had stood against Ioran and Alissia, perhaps I had misjudged him. Unfortunately, now that I was the ruler of Ebonreach, the case for his personality was irrelevant. Only politics and diplomacy mattered between us now.

‘That is most unfortunate,’ I said, ‘But I must bid you speak with haste, for I have countless handmaidens of impatient disposition awaiting my appearance to arrange a nursery. What message do you bring?’

‘In that case, my lady, I will be blunt. King Milos is at war with an enemy which can strike from anywhere, at any time. Halivaara is in a state of war, and the King requires you to provide a tithe of men and gold to support his inevitable victory against the Vizonian Order.’

There it was. The demand for what little we had to serve the King rather than the County.

I was unsurprised, as the Crown was entitled to raise an emergency tithe in the case of an existential conflict, and this had occurred without controversy throughout history. The time was fortuitous, however, coming on the heels of Entregwa’s demands and my increasing embroilment with the rebellion in Trent.

‘What is the tithe?’ I asked. Already, one soldier in five and a proportionate amount of tax was sent to Hollowhold as a basic subsidy, with almost all of the former currently deployed in Mattrath to defend against the desert nomads.

‘Three additional soldiers of every ten, and an additional thirty percent of Country revenue are to be entrusted to the governance of the Crown.’

Alum’s mouth was agape. I realised mine was too. What an extortionate amount! I saw visions of County finances written in red ink, where all numbers were preceded by a minus sign and all sheets were countersigned by a merchant creditor. I saw a half-finished Dusky Castle lying in ruin, with moss and vines creeping untended across unmortared bricks and untiled roofs. Most prominently, I pictured bands of Tokuan raiders flooding around the extremities of narrow shield walls like a stream of flowing water past a rock. At the end of my visions,Highfather Ioran cast a greedy eye toward the weakened defences of Ebonreach.

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry, my lady, could you please repeat yourself?’

‘I said “no”. As in “no, you will not have one man of every two”, and “no, you will not have half of the state revenue.”’

‘Prince Alum, please speak to your woman,’ the messenger said. Alum shook his head in disappointment as I stood to my full height.

‘I have made my decision, now get out of my County before I have your neck stretched on the gallows. As my response was in the negative, it matters to me not one whit whether or not you survive the return journey!’

Just like that, the messenger disappeared onto the streets of Trackford. I was shaking, not with rage, but with trepidation. I knew what I’d just done, though it was the best course left open to me.

Alum put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek, and I felt instantly comforted.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘Now,’ I replied. ‘We prepare for war.’